Ask A Breslover: Drawing Shabat Into The Week

Q: I was wondering if you could help me understand the concept of “drawing the holiness of Shabbos into the days of the week.” What does this mean? How is it done?
Thanks.

A: Thanks for your important — and extremely practical — question.

The holiness of Shabbos is manifested in a number of ways — e.g., the special foods we eat, clothes we wear in her honor — but the essence of Shabbos is something we can’t actually touch. So, wearing your shtreimel on Tuesday and eating leftover chulent is NOT “drawing the holiness….” 🙂

But the “being” of Shabbos, that she is a testimony to God’s creating the world in six days and resting on the seventh; that Shabbos and the Jewish people are “married” to each other; that Shabbos and Torah, too, are inextricably linked (the Torah was given to us on Shabbos, and not by accident); these “pieces” of faith and that Shabbos is a foretaste of the World to Come, are some (only some) of the Shabbos holiness Rebbe Nachman teaches to extend to the weekdays.

How? One way is to choose a Shabbos “theme” (as above) of the week. Relate it to your various activities: How does, or, can, this activity testify to God’s creating the world? to Shabbos’s marriage to the Jewish people? etc.

Of course, the longer one practices looking for Shabbos during the week [a] the better he gets at doing it; [b] the more Shabbos is “intruding”/penetrating his consciousness during the week.